


Unrepentant

by thethingsunsaid



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes - Honoré de Balzac
Genre: 19thc France, Gen, Guns, M/M, convicts, prisons, some stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 05:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13851330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethingsunsaid/pseuds/thethingsunsaid
Summary: Javert, Vautrin and Theodore Calvi on an unlikely buddy-cop adventure, with cameos from Jean Valjean and various miscreants.Set after the events of Splendeurs et Miseres.





	Unrepentant

The Boss was still gone.

"I'll be back by tomorrow" he'd said, and he wasn't.

To be a spy was to master the art of disappearing and Jacques Collin had been gone for a lot longer than this before; but he was always straight about it. Something was up. Theo came to a decision, put away the little knife he'd been fiddling with and went to find Inspector Javert.

“Detective Vautrin has gone missing.”

Javert turned his head. “What do you mean ‘missing’?”

“He didn’t report to the rendezvous yesterday. There’s still no word.”

The sentence _I’m going after him_ hung in the air, unsaid. Theodore felt his shoulder muscles twitch, and tried to still them.

"He ordered you to stay here." Javert said, incontrovertible voice as stiff as his collar.

"I'll apologise when I find him."

"I'm ordering you to stay here, Madeleine. If you go after him you could expose him as an agent of the police.” He seemed to consider. “If he has not returned by tomorrow, we’ll take action.” He turned away; clearly from his point of view the conversation was over.

Theodore looked after him in disbelief. He did not understand Javert. The man was righteous; he upheld the law and yet it seemed that he was devoid of any kind of fellow-feeling. He might have been made of stone.

Theodore thought of following, of threatening or appealing to him. He did neither.

Instead, he took his little knife and ventured down the back streets out of the village to do the thing on his own.

It took him a while to find the place; a tumbledown old mansion, several fields away with outbuildings dotted around and arable land gone inexplicably to seed. As he walked he felt a jumbled mixture of freedom and discomfort. If he did not find Jaques, and Javert reported him, there was a good chance that he would lose his job. This should not have bothered him; yet somehow it did.

He did not understand why the Boss wanted him to be a policeman; why he had not let Theo join the Surete where everyone had a dubious history. Oh, he said he was waiting to get rid of that old dog Vidocq, but as to that Theodore gave it little credit. His life now was that of an underpaid policeman, a semi-bourgeois bureaucrat. He did not comprehend why the thought of losing it should give him any qualm, and he jammed his hands further into his pockets, thumbing his knife, and scowled.

As he approached the mansion, he made the sign to ward off the evil eye; there were ruined houses dotted about nearby and the place had been gutted by fire.

Quietly, he looked through empty windows. The place seemed deserted. All at once, he heard a voice calling out, and ducked into a nearby structure.

This was a mistake. Inside the building was a young man with long, curling hair sorting through a bag. He looked up in surprise and Theo stepped forwards, a knife in his hand. His opponent reached for a surin of his own. But he was slower than Theodore and it would have gone very hard for him if his shout had gone unanswered.

Unfortunately, for Theo Calvi, it did not.

To his bemusement, they did not kill him. If he'd been surprised by a copper in handling stolen goods, he'd have stiffed the fellow at once. But clearly these villains lacked his initiative and good sense. After they'd got his knife and amused themselves by kicking seven kinds of shit out of him they simply dragged him to the old house and pushed him down a flight of stairs to await their boss’s return.

He contemplated trying to get up, but it seemed an unpleasantly painful idea, so he resigned himself to lying quietly on the stone steps until everything stopped hurting so much.

When it became clear that wasn't going to happen, he gritted his teeth and tried moving anyway.

"Are you all right, young man?"

Was there a ghost in here with him? He peered into the darkness. There was a shaft of light coming through a sort of grill in one corner of the ceiling. In the dimness he could just make out the figure of an old man, his hair and beard gleaming silver and half his body obscured in shadow.

Seeing no immediate threat, Theo dismissed the question as patently stupid and shut his eyes again.

He opened them quickly enough when the stranger approached and began pressing his limbs.

"Hey" he said and reached for the knife in his boot. No-one touched Theodore Calvi unless it was on his own terms; and he was in no shape to discuss terms now.

But the grandfather, having presumably ascertained from his examination that Theo was safe to be moved, held his arm in one hand like a vice and proceeded to pick him up. Theodore shouted in protest, but the man lifted him as if he was no more than a babe in arms, and with as little fuss, laying him down on a greatcoat spread out in one corner before Theodore could do a thing about it.

He revised his first estimation of his fellow prisoner; nobody who looked old enough to be his grandfather ought to have that kind of strength. Though he looked like a retired veteran, Theodore had no doubt that the man could snap him in two as easily as cutting a toenail.

He pushed himself upright, wincing. The men upstairs had been enthusiastic; he thought one of his ribs might be fractured.

He cast about for some means of escape. The faint light was sucked into the dark walls, showing no crevices or crannies. The place seemed carved from the unforgiving rock by the earth itself. The door was stout oak and held his assailants behind it. The only breath of air came from the grill in the ceiling. He tried to stand up.

"Lie down" the old man said, coming out of whatever trance he had been lost in. "That grille is twenty feet up, and you are injured. What are you doing here?"

Theo glared at him. "I'm looking for someone."

The old man looked suddenly pained. “Who?” he asked quietly.

"None of your business" Theo said suspiciously, and, with a grunt, bent far enough to fumble the knife out of his boot. If he had not been injured he would have left it concealed, to keep the advantage, but given the effort it took simply to bend over he preferred to have a weapon to hand.

The grandfather seemed to fall back into whatever reverie had occupied him before Theo's arrival. He too had something in his hand and his gaze kept returning to it as if it held the key to the world.

Theo propped himself up against the wall and started cleaning the knife with his shirt.

"What is your name, young man?" his fellow prisoner asked him suddenly.

"They call me Madeleine," he answered, guardedly.

The old fellow seemed struck by this. "Madeleine! That is a name from the past. How did you come by it?" He spoke with a curious, intent expression.

Theo scowled. “That is none of your business; leave me alone old man or it will go badly for you. I have killed men before.”

At his words the aged man seemed agitated . “What! How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-five? You are a child! How is it that you have come to these straits? Take care, or you will find yourself in a worse prison than this. There are dungeons in this world that will eat a man alive. This place might be dark, but at least you see the light. If you commit yourself to such a life, or associate with those who do, you will come to know dank holes that the sun has never kissed. Your companions will be ever-present chains and the rats that gnaw on the mouldy bread. You are young and strong; but you will know what it is to be strapped to a bench so that your limbs begin to wither and then hard toil will strip away your youth to the bone."

"Are you lecturing me?" asked Theo, in disbelief. "I was two years in Rochefort; I have been a hair’s-breadth from the guillotine staircase. I am older than I look! Do not speak to me of prisons - I have escaped worse ones that this. Who are you to sermonize me?"

"Who am I?” His fellow prisoner seemed lost for a moment. “I am no-one. I am the father of Cosette Fauchelevant; that is all." There was a silence. Then, in a voice that seemed to quaver, "What could you have done, that they would send you to Rochefort for it, young Madeleine?"

Theo didn’t answer. It was odd to hear the name on the lips of someone who was not the Boss. Most of those others who had known it had gone to the guillotine or the slower death of the bagnes. He had helped send them there himself. His situation suddenly seemed a ridiculous hypocrisy; he was a policeman held prisoner by criminals, and if he did not escape, he would be executed for his betrayal of their society. It was almost appropriate.

“Who are you to speak of the galleys, anyhow?” he asked, when he wearied of the silence. It reminded him too much of another cold cell, waiting for weeks beside an inoffensive, chattering man who would sign Ginetta’s death warrant if Theo opened his mouth. They said it broke men; but Theo would not be broken. No Judas, he.

Not then.

He thought the old man would not answer, but after a long pause he murmured, as if to himself: “After all, we may never get out of this. We share a name, he and I, and who knows but it may do him some good? It makes no difference now.”

He turned to Theo. “I was nineteen years in Toulon; they sent me there before you were even born.”

Nineteen years! But Theo had seen men in for that long; they were broken-down wretches, men ground down into lesser beings. But there was, after all something of the bagne about the man's face, that same lost, panicked look that Theodore had seen in men's eyes in Rochefort. “What for?”.

“I stole a loaf of bread.”

Theo stared at him. It’s impossible, he wanted to say. Nobody gets nineteen years for stealing a baguette. But he believed it,nonetheless. In the galleys, anything was possible.

The effort of confession seemed to have cost the old man. He rubbed his hands against his shoulders, as if he were cold, then clenched and released them into fists by his side. “And what did you do, Madeleine?”

Theodore Calvi was a hardened criminal. He had strangled people with his bare hands. If you asked him he would say he had not felt shame once in fifteen years. He was almost certain he did not feel it now. Probably it was indigestion.

He was saved from answering by a man falling down the stairs.

Theo leaned over to see who it was, ignoring the ache in his ribs. He was hoping it was one of his tormentors - the fall had looked painful. But, to his disappointment, it was only Javert.

"Well" he muttered. "This is a fine fix! There goes my hope of rescue from the outside."

Madeleine - the other Madeleine - knelt beside the prone police officer who appeared insensible after his swift descent. But no sooner had he leaned over the man than he leapt backwards as if bitten by a snake. Even in the fading dusk it was possible to see that he had gone alarmingly pale. "You!" he exclaimed. “I should have known you would follow me here as well." He fell back against the wall, as though the power of standing unaided had deserted him.

"What, do you know each other?" Theodore asked curiously. "Come now, there is hope - the old stick may be dead yet." He cheered up a little at the thought. "Hi there, Javert - wake up! At least we are underground already - that will save on the cost of the funeral."

The old man seemed to recover himself slightly. "You are right - if not dead, he may at least be badly hurt." It was impossible to know whether he was concerned or gladdened by this proposition. Once more he approached Javert. "Ah! He is breathing." He managed to sound at once relieved and disappointed. He began to press briefly up and down the man’s limbs, as he had done to Theodore.

"What are you doing?" Theo asked, rather rudely.

"Checking his bones. I was – I did -a deal of climbing in my youth and a fall can do a lot of damage to a man. There; none are badly broken, though I fear this wrist may be fractured." He went over to where a brackish trickle of water ran down the wall and, moistening his handkerchief, laid it on Javert’s forehead. Then he frowned and bent over the Inspector’s chest. Hastily he began to undo the buttons of the coat “He is bleeding; there is a wound here.”

The Inspector began to cough and groan. The other Madeleine was opening the shirt when Javert’s eyes snapped open and he gripped the old man’s wrist. Theo expected him to flinch but the old man held his ground calmly as the Inspector pulled him in, so close their faces were almost touching and looked at him for a long moment. At last, Theodore shifted uncomfortably and coughed, but neither seemed to notice.

“You are wounded” Madeleine said.

"You!" snarled Javert.

"Yes," replied the old man. "It is I."

As revealing dialogue went, Theodore felt this exchange left a great deal to be desired.

"Arrest this man!" demanded Javert, pushing the older Madeleine away and pulling his coat closed, covering up the dark stain on his shirt.

Theodore stared at him. "What?"

"This is the escaped prisoner 24601.” Javert declared. “They presumed him dead, but I knew otherwise. I was on his trail years ago in Paris but he gave me the slip. Arrest him at once!" He struggled to sit up but a fit of coughing overtook him and he fell back, half-swooning.

"Excuse me" said the old man. "But the number 24601 does not apply to me any longer. After you sent me to the block a second time, I gained a different number. Perhaps you had forgotten?"

For a moment Javert looked a little abashed. Then he seemed to gather himself. "Do not be impertinent. You are Jean Valjean, and I have you now. You are under arrest."

"I thought his name was Madeleine?" interjected Theo.

Both men turned to glare at him. "That was his alias when impersonating a mayor" ground out Javert coldly.

A mayor! Theo looked at the old man with a new respect. The two had returned once more to their locked gaze. Theodore had the impression that they had actually forgotten he was there.

"I impersonated no-one; I was elected" said Madeleine - or Valjean, whatever his name was.

"You are a criminal. You have no rights to election."

The old man bowed his head. "You are right. Still, let me staunch your bleeding.”

Javert drew back like a maiden whose virtue has been insulted. “You will not touch me!”

“Very well; then I must ask you something-"

"You! Ask something of me - what would I grant to you? You know very well that mercy is not my style."

"It is not mercy, but justice I seek," Valjean returned

"You will find it in the galleys!"

Theodore ran out of patience. "In case it has escaped your notice," he snapped, "we are in a dungeon!"

Javert turned his familiar, formidable bushy frown on him. “I was not aware that this prohibited us from arresting people.”

“Perhaps we could consider escaping first!” Theo retorted, with strained patience. “Preferably before we all get shot!”

“Very well” said Javert, teeth gritted. “Would you care to enlighten as to as to how?”

Unfortunately, Theodore did not have an answer to that. Instead he said: "Do you have your pistols?"

"No" said Javert, scowling. "It appears they are not in the habit of letting prisoners carry weapons."

"We must try for the grille then," said Theo, without much hope. "You are in no shape to climb though." He tried levering himself up and stumbled to his feet, straightening as much as possible.

"Neither are you." Javert said. "But he is." He gestured at the old man.

The old man - Valjean?- nodded. Theodore was about to protest but before he could voice it the veteran began to climb and he could only stare in awe.

The wall, which had appeared completely sheer was now revealed to be made up of myriad cracks and crumbling gaps large enough to support a finger or a toe. Like one of the lithe grey lizards that had crawled up Theo’s bedroom wall as a child, Jean Valjean shinned up the dark stone. At the top he braced himself against the grill, setting his back against it. He tensed and, incredibly, Theo heard the creaking sound of old iron. It seemed the grille might actually give way! Then the old man froze. He craned his neck upward, and his grip faltered. He would surely slip!

But Theo’s fears proved to be unfounded. Valjean climbed down as swiftly as a spider, and overhead, the muffled sound of footsteps and conversation continued undisturbed.

Theodore was halfway up the makeshift rope when he heard the little click from the door. He slid down so fast that half the skin came off his hand. Would they see the rope? It was close to the wall, but under the grille was the lightest place in this hole. He rubbed his palms on his breeches and had his knife waiting in his hand by the time the stairs were blocked by a broad shape and a familiar voice said softly: "Well now, what have the cats brought home today?"

The feeling of relief was like having all his bones loosened slightly as Theo called out " _Sempre ti!_ ", pitching his voice loud enough to carry to the stairs but no further.

 _Always yours._ The phrase did not grate on him as it had so often of late.

The door slammed behind the figure. "Theo?" hissed the Boss. And then, in the bastard argot of French, Corsican and Italian they'd developed in Rocheforte, "What the hell are you doing here? _Sempre mi_ indeed; last time I checked this was not our agreed rendezvous point!"

He advanced down the steps towards them, shouting loudly in French. "Prepare to die, you bastards!" As he did so, he pulled two pistols out of the front of his coat, and fired one of them into a pile of sacks by the stairs. He looked furious.

"I told you to wait." he snarled, much more quietly at Theo, and then he saw Javert. "What the fuck happened to you?"

"I had an unexpected encounter with a pistol" Javert said. "Needless to say, the pistol won."

"I thought you were immune to being shot." Vautrin said, pausing in the act of reloading the pistol.

"So I have been told. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have informed these fellows of that fact. Give me a gun and I shall endeavour to correct their misapprehensions"

"Can you stand?"

"Of course I can stand!" Javert snarled, indignantly climbing to his feet, though he looked haggard and unsteady. "I was shot in the shoulder, not the foot. Did you find the murderer?"

"That's not all I found" said Jacques grimly, handing him the gun. "And you! " He turned on Theo, looking at him coldly. "What were you playing at? I told you to wait for me!" He switched languages again. "The next time you disobey me, I will shoot you myself. If you were anyone else, I would do it now and the world would think it a tragic accident. Or in more cases a happy one. Understand?"

Theodore nodded curtly.

"And who is this?" Jacques turned to look at the old man.

"I might ask you the same question" Valjean replied, stepping forward. His eyes narrowed and he peered closely. Then his eyes widened and his expression was equal parts shock and dumbfounded fury. "You-" he said, and it seemed to Theo that he was searching for an epithet and could not think of one that was not too filthy to say. For a moment Theo thought that Jacques was going to deny all knowledge of anything; a feat which he was particularly skilled at. Nobody could deny knowledge like Jacques Collin in full creative swing. Then a look crossed his features that Theo had never seen before; it was unfamiliar and gone so fast that it could not be identified. If it had been anyone else, Theo would have said it might be guilt, but that was impossible.

Then Vautrin said, as easily as if they were meeting in a coffee house, "Hello Jean," and handed him a pistol.

Why was it that everyone except Theodore seemed to know this fellow?

"Don't I get a gun?" he asked, trying to sound as if he didn't care either way.

"You," said Jacques, "have a knife, and are proficient enough with it that you should not have ended up here in the first place." This had enough truth to it that it made Theo scowl. Then Vautrin gestured to the stairs. As they went he whispered, low and fast: "I believe the murderer to be one Fils-de-Soie. He's been using this as his hideout for years but this time he's brought trouble with him. He probably thought to use these vagabonds to lead us astray. I have tricked him into believing I am one of his old companions.

Javert grunted, sounding grudgingly impressed.

"At the count of three" Vautrin whispered, "We will ambush them."

He held up one finger, two-

Then the door swung open and a gun was pointing at Jacques head, held in the hand of a thin, weasel-faced man. "Now" he said, in tones of black hatred. "What has the cat dragged home indeed." With a feeling like cold water splashed down his neck, Theodore recognised the thin, mocking voice, like a ghost from the bagne.

It was Fil-de-Soie.

Then a pistol shot rang out, and hell broke loose.

Fil-de-Soie fired at Jacques, and at almost the same time as Javert shot back. Both balls went wide, one skimming past Theo's ear and the other landing in Fil-de-Soie's forearm. The little man yelped and pulled a blade. At the same time, Theo barged past him and was confronted with a screaming hag, built like a man, swinging an iron bar. He ducked as she came at him, and then Javert was on her from behind - where had he come from? To his right the old Madeleine was fighting with a mountain of a man - holding his own, and Theo had no time to wonder how, before someone tried to jump him from behind and his knife fighters' reflexes took over, jabbing and slashing with no thought but to live. In the background he could hear Fils-de-Soie shouting at Jacques, and wondered why Jacques hadn’t killed him yet.

"You bastard! Where's the money, eh, Trompe-le-Mort? What did you do with the blunt?"

Spent it on prettyboy Lucien probably, Theodore thought, with some bitterness. He didn't know all the details of what that scam had been, but the look on Jacques face whenever it came up had been the cause of more than one arguement.

Javert had the woman, tied with some sort of makeshift chain and belatedly Theodore remembered that he was supposed to be arresting people as well.

"I'm a policeman," he said, to the masked man who was jabbing at him as he dodged. "Give yourself up!"

The answer came from behind him. "I could." Theodore turned and he would have died if the old man hadn't fired a shot straight over the masked man's head. Theo turned to stab him but the man was gone. What the fuck? The big man on the floor was trying to crawl towards him, and Theo bent over to slit his throat.

Behind him Fil-de-Soie was shouting. "It was me that shopped you in Paris in ‘19! Hah! Didn't know that did you? Turned out you were a dirty traitor yourself."

Jacques voice, quiet and so matter-of-fact it was almost cheerful. "You bastard. Philosopher died for that."

Another shot, and Theo heard Fil-de-Soie cry out but he didn't turn, because he'd just seen the girl edging towards the door. He grabbed her arm, "Surrender" he said, holding his bloody knife up to her throat. She nodded, looking terrified, and he shoved her over to the old woman.

There was a sound behind him and he looked round to see the dandy who'd kicked his ribs in, a gun in his hand. Shit. The old man was moving but it would be too late. He was dead, for sure. The youth fired, but Valjean knocked the gun aside and the shot missed, the weapon skittering across the floor. The kid looked at him in shock. Then, defiantly, he pulled a blade and launched himself at Theo.

The boy was fast and desperate, but there was only one of him this time, and Theo had a knife in his ribs and a hand pinning his wrist before the youth could get near him. The boy gulped like a fish. His lovely hair was a mess and he looked at Theo with wet eyes in utter disbelief, as if he had not known that he was going to die like this. Theodore looked back at him steadily and held him down while he died, because even a dying person could kill you.

Then it was over, and he stood up and surveyed the room.

Jacques was standing grimly over the body of Fil-de -Soie. Javert was sitting against a wall, one hand clutching his shoulder. He had his pistol trained carefully on the prisoners, but it was clear he could not remain conscious much longer. The old man was looking around like one who has stumbled into hell.

"You alright?" Theodore asked him, because the old fellow had saved his life after all.

Vautrin stalked over. "What I want to know" he said, just low enough to be out of Javert's earshot "Is what the hell Jean-le-Cric is doing here? Last I heard you were drowned."

Valjean looked up with a face full of sudden rage. "And what would you care? The last I saw of you, you were free and clear and I - " He stopped. His eyes were blue glass, all the anger drained out, leaving behind only the colour of the sea. "All day I sat beneath that keel, before they dragged me out. You said you would be back. Two years, on the double-chain for that, two years! And five upon my sentence"

Jacques looked uncomfortable. Theo stared at them mutely. He knew the penalty for a failed escape; he bore the memory of it still. He felt a sudden kinship with the old fellow. Though it was not the Boss's fault they had been separated and Theodore recaptured, still he could not help thinking: I know what it is to be left behind.

The old man seemed to square his shoulders. "Still" he said, meeting Vautrin’s eyes with blunt directness. "You are a policeman now, I gather. You have redeemed yourself. That is good." He glanced at Theo. "Men should have the chance to change." He held out his hands, offering them up. "You can arrest me now. I-." His voice shook a little, but when he spoke again it was steady. "I broke my parole."

Javert, leaning against the wall made an outraged choking sound, like a sick cat. It seemed he would have spoken if he could, but all his powers were trained on the prisoners and he only coughed and glowered.

"Theodore" said Vautrin, not looking at the old man. "Take this man and sweep the grounds for evidence. I will take care of Inspector Javert and the other prisoners."

Theo nodded and gave a half-hearted salute.

 

***

 

He found the house where he'd first been jumped. The stash had been moved, but not far. There hadn't been time. He pulled out the pad and pencil his attackers hadn't bothered to confiscate and made laborious notes detailing where everything. Valjean watched him silently. Finally Theodore let his curiosity break through his calm facade.

"Why did you give yourself up? You could have just run. You know that old Trompe-le-Mort would have let you go, and even the great Javert is in no state to take you down just now."

Valjean frowned. "That is not true" he said. "I gave myself up because he knew the truth, and there seemed no dignity in drawing out."

Theodore stared at him, and suddenly he was not calm at all. He was exhausted and bruised and so angry he wanted to kill someone else. "You're an old man! If you go back to the hulks they will chew you up and spit you out in coffin! Don't you care? Don't you want to see your precious daughter again?"

"Of course I care!" snapped Valjean. He closed his eyes and his chest rose and fell. Opening them, he said, more calmly. "But it is not my choice. It is yours; you are a police officer and must follow the dictates of the law and of your conscience."

Theo laughed, an ironic breath that was closer to a snort. The dictates of his conscience!

""I'm not a police officer" he said, looking at the wall and not caring that he was being reckless. It felt good; he was sick of being careful, being silent. "I'm a murderer." He had sat for weeks in silence, waiting for the guillotine, until Jacques had returned, like an unlikely angel to save him, and then he kept his silence still. And what good had it done anyone?

He turned on Valjean, and his words were like knife cuts, sharp and ugly. "My family name was not Madeleine, and I am not from Italy. When I was thirteen, my father took me to the village graveyard to look at the headstones of our enemies, the Stradoni. He told me they represented the honour of our family name. Theodore looked up. " It does not matter what that name was, because there is no one left in our village to bear it any longer. There are no Stradoni either. By the time I was eighteen, I had killed eleven people."

He glanced at Valjean who was listening, his white head on one side, though his eyes betrayed his discomfort. "You know nothing of such things." Theodore said. "What did you do? Take some bread! That is nothing! I have done worse things now than when I left Rocheforte. If they had executed me then, how many lying cold in the earth now would still be breathing today. I am a thief and a murderer and a liar. You are a fool or a saint, or both." 

He stopped, breathing hard. "I might kill you, but I refuse to arrest you."

Valjean bowed his head, but his voice was defiant, as if he was determined to keep up some false front of nobility. "Very well then. I must offer you my thanks, for no matter what else you may have done, you have helped me this day." He surveyed the ruined hovel, Theo and his notebook. "Tell me, Sergeant," he said. "Why did you choose the name Madeleine?"

Theodore looked away. "It was what they called me in prison" he muttered after a pause, feeling a muscle in his jaw twitch. "Because she was good-looking and she made her living on her knees."

“Ah.” The old man was silent, watching Theodore continue his inventory. Then he said: “I too took the name of Madeleine, many years ago. The patron saint of all repentant sinners?”

He turned to leave, not running, but at the stately pace of an elderly gentleman. At the door, he stopped and said mildly. “Perhaps you are right to say that I know nothing. But still there is one thing that I that I hold true above all else; and it is this: so long as there is life, there is the possibility of change. Only the dead are beyond redemption.”

Theodore watched him go for a moment, a straight-backed figure moving like a ghost among the abandoned cottages. Then he turned, put down his notebook, and stood staring for a long time at the piles of stolen goods, the little chinking coins of the unrepentant dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks prudencepaccard for making me post this! I hope you like it :-)


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